1995 Michael Jackson: Earth Song

It's my own fault I suppose. Because my teenage years fell squarely within the eighties, I grew up with a version of Michael Jackson that's become definitive. Not for me the precocious early seventies child star of the Jackson 5 - no, my Michael Jackson was the single gloved, red leather jacketed face of the pneumatic pop sheen of 'Billie Jean' and its ilk. Golden years. Unfortunately, it also means that the music produced by the latter day Jackson wasn't really for me either, and if I looked sideways at 'You Are Not Alone' then along comes 'Earth Song' to knock me into a complete loop.

A curious entry into the Jackson canon, the only thing comparable is his 'We Are The World' co-write from 1985, though that was written to an order dictated by the mood of the times and the need for the US to be seen to be 'doing something' for famine relief comparable to the UK's Band Aid project. 'Earth Song' has no such pre-set agenda to follow save Jackson's own, but whereas the former song promised a "brighter day", the latter has a less rosy outlook to offer.

Apparently styled as an open letter to God ("What about all the peace, that you pledge your only son"), over its six minutes playing time Jackson bemoans what mankind has done to the world in a hideous mash up of ever increasing histrionics, clumsy imagery and bad metaphor of "bleeding earth", "weeping shores", blood, water, fire and brimstone that crank up the intensity in cycles leaving Jackson howling into the Armageddon until he squeaks "What about elephants!!!" And what indeed? But what about a little restraint Michael? A little subtlety or a little heart? 'Earth Song' has none of these things.

In fact, the cumulative effect is like being repeatedly slapped in the face by cold, dead fish that increases in size as the song progresses from a small mackerel that perished in an oil spill at the opening to a full head and body bludgeon from one of the "crying whales" freshly overculled by a Japanese commercial fleet at the bombastic boom of the ending. Subtle it is not; 'Earth Song' reminds me of the over earnest end product of a secondary school environmental project performed at an end of term concert while Miss Davies of the IT department projects stock images of pollution and famine on the wall behind them. I don't doubt Jackson's sincerity, but 'Earth Song' is a folly crude in its obviousness, clumsy in its execution and with no charm at all in its awkward naivety.

1995 Robson & Jerome: I Believe

Another outing for the singing soldiers (surnames only this time) with another reliable workhorse of a song on day release from the retirement home. In terms of popularity, Frankie Laine's eighteen week at the top 1953 version has to be the benchmark, but Messer's Robson and Jerome abandon Laine's intensity for a lighter touch on their friendlier trinket of a version that's as faithful as it's predictable. With neither voice capable of raising any rafters, the music is left to shoulder the work of building to an end of the pier crescendo of massed choirs, kettle drums and tubular bells (well, it is Christmas) that's akin to drilling holes into a Ford Fiesta exhaust just to make it sound more powerful. Frankie didn't need any of that nonsense, but then again he had a vocal presence that could fill a room with no help whatsoever. Neither Robson nor Jerome, together or singularly, could say as much and this version is polite, harmless and totally unnecessary. Unless it has a subliminal backward 'Jointhearmyjointhearmyjointhearmy' message in there somewhere. Which I doubt. So 'totally unnecessary' it is then.

1995 Coolio: Gangsta's Paradise

The title of Laurie Anderson's 1981 hit 'Oh Superman' was suffixed by the dedication 'for Massanet'; Anderson had based her song on "Ô Souverain" from Massanet's opera 'El Cid', an aria of surrender to superior forces beyond your control. It's themes are present, albeit updated, in Anderson's own observational monologue of a whole world collapsing in on itself as its core values fall away - "Cause when love is gone, there's always justice. And when justice is gone, there's always force. And when force is gone, there's always Mom". 'Gangsta's Paradise' isn't suffixed by 'for Wonder', but through being so closely based on Stevie Wonder's 1976 song 'Past Time Paradise', then it should have been, not least because Coolio twists the original into something else entirely in a manner that echo's Anderson's own approach.

Of course, sampling has been prevalent in rap and hip hop since Afrika Bambaataa was borrowing beats from Kraftwerk and the Yellow Magic Orchestra, yet while its undeniable that anybody with ears could tell that the whole main melody of 'Gangsta's Paradise' is lifted wholesale from Wonder's track, it's not in this case simply a matter of plagiarism by a lazy writer (its use has Wonder's blessing in any case). And that's because, despite the immediate similarities, Coolio's song updates or 'answers' Wonder's with a stance that's a reversed mirror image to the message of the source.

Both tracks have the plight of the black man in latter day America at their core, but while Wonder bemoans the inertia of a race ("They've been wasting most their lives, glorifying days long gone behind") waiting patiently to inherit the earth ("they keep telling of the day when the Saviour of love will come to stay"), Coolio's generation have left such blind acceptance behind and are all out to take it ("Me be treated like a punk, you know that's unheard of, you better watch how ya talking and where ya walking, or you and your homies might be lined in chalk").

Rap is frequently castigated for glorifying and romanticising violence, but nobody in this 'paradise' is wearing anything so rose tinted - violence is a matter of fact of every day life ("death ain't nothing but a heart beat away") governed by its own in-built code of the street ("But I ain't never crossed a man that didn't deserve it") and presented as a shot of realism that neither glorifies nor condemns. And then in terms of music, 'Past Time Paradise's lyric of good times gone was replicated in a baroquely yearning, almost chamber music arrangement that tipped it's hat at 'Eleanor Rigby'. There are strings in 'Gangsta' s Paradise' too, but their wounded animal cries drip with a Bernard Hermann paranoia, ably assisted by the heartbeat thump of a bass-driven march and ghostly choir on the chorus that amplifies the urban dread in a way not heard in these pages since 'Ghost Town'.

It's been a long time coming, but after a few false starts and splutters, 'Gangsta's Paradise' is the first genuine rap number one. True, there are going to be many who won't see that as any great leap forward, but whatever your politics regarding the genre, it's heartening to see the public embracing something with a genuine edge and menace in these horse latitudes of the mid nineties where blandness has become a virtue and the norm rather than the exception. Which isn't bad for a song from a hokey Michelle Pfeiffer film that few remember now.

1995 Simply Red: Fairground

Whilst Simply Red's slick and cosy, nouveau soul tends to draw a fairly clear love it/hate it line in the sand, 'Fairground' is a difficult song to get to grips with. Hucknall's reliable vocal and the warmth of the recurring "I love the thought of coming home to you" urge me to clasp it to my heart, but its setting is too jagged and prickly for that and it's one that serves to keep it at arm's length - 'Fairground' tips its hat to dance culture and serves up a more angular clatter in place of the usual bedrock of brass/string driven winebar soul. And yet for all the undercurrent of rough abrasion, there's a formlessness about 'Fairground' that's difficult to reason with and harder to enjoy; it's not a song I can lose myself in, but to listen with any intent reveals the smoke and mirrors that its sophisticated adult sheen is built on. 'Fairground' is a more fragment than a fully formed song, but it's given substance by studio trickery and overdubs in the way a factory farmer will stuff a cow with hormones and steroids to make it bigger than it would otherwise be. It might be their only number one, but 'Fairground' would not make the cut of any 'Best Of Simply Red' that I was asked to compile.

1995 Shaggy: Boombastic

Following his revival of 'Oh Carolina', Shaggy's neo-dancehall output continued to blend the old and the new with'Boombastic's good humoured mix of reggae, ragga, rap and R&B (RRRR&B?) making for a groin level throb that's hard to resist. 'Boombastic' is self promotion on a grand yet tongue in cheek scale ("I'm a lyrical lover no take me for no filth, with my sexual physique Jah know me well built"), and though his patois again means I can't make out half of what he's saying, the cocksure testosterone that drips from the grooves doesn't suggest he's whinging about having no luck with the ladies. Perhaps the tongue in cheek humour leans slightly too far into Ali G territory (not that Shaggy would have been aware of this in 1995 of course, but it's there for modern ears), but it's relentless, stop start sensuality creates an inbuilt steam room that made for an unimprovable way to keep the summer of 1995 alive for a few weeks longer.

1995 Michael Jackson: You Are Not Alone

The early nineties were not a good time to be Michael Jackson. With child sex abuse allegations threatening to call a halt to both career and liberty, any and all of his previous eccentricities came home to roost to paint a picture of a troubled and disturbed individual far removed from the glossy king of pop that dominated the eighties. A marriage to Lisa Marie Presley the previous year and their joint semi-nude turns in the video for this didn't do much to defuse the 'Wacko' nickname either; frankly, the man was captain of a rocking boat that needed to be stabilised.

Though long since established as an accomplished songwriter, 'You Are Not Alone' was written by R Kelly, albeit especially with Jackson in mind. An R&B ballad of lost love and longing, my problem from the outset is that it sounds like an R Kelly song, and I don't listen to Michael Jackson to hear R Kelly. In truth too I've never found Jackson terribly convincing as a balladeer either. Not on love songs anyway; while it's true to say the voice had matured since the brittle 'One Day In Your Life', 'You Are Not Alone' still carries an edge of unwillingness to embrace the solo spotlight without his trademark yelps and whoops colouring outside the lines. That's not necessarily Jackson's fault - Kelly's dull ballad provides little room to manoeuvre and with a rigid structure to follow, Jackson is as awkwardly constrained as a teenage punk at a job interview in a new suit. Which is apt really as the interview here was with his public with the song an appeal for recognition that, after all the slings and arrows hurled in his direction, he bleeds like the rest of us.

Ironically, it's exactly this vulnerability that gives 'You Are Not Alone' the edge that lifts it higher than the song's inherent worth. Contemporary events had conspired to give what would ordinarily be workaday R&B fodder resonance outside of simply being the latest Michael Jackson single. And it's that resonance that's going to colour your reaction to this; if you're part of 'Team Jackson' then the "Another day has gone, I'm still all alone" gives you all the excuse you need to want to give him a hug. If you're not, then this is just drippy, a rather cynical tug on the heartstrings from a man sounding like a small boy lost in the mall trying to explain to a security guard where he last saw his mother. I'll plump for the latter.

1995 Blur: Country House

Oasis may have beaten them to the laurels of the first Brtitpop number one, but the battle fought and the ultimate victory for Blur with this song was enough to make the national news in 1995; that Blur and Oasis were releasing their latest singles on the same day was a golden egg freshly laid for a media starved of any recent (or decent) controversy or excitement in popular music. As an added bonus, there was the spin of a North/South (Oasis/Blur) cultural battle, a generated rivalry initially fuelled by both bands that always threatened to spill over in fisticuffs at dawn with the angle being that Oasis appealed to the working classes while Blur appealed to the educated South. Or the wannabe working class - I tend to picture Jarvis Cocker's would-be proletariat girlfriend in Pulp's 'Common People' having 'Definitely Maybe' on heavy rotation on her stereo rather than 'Parklife'.

That Blur won the battle but lost the war is a matter of pop folklore/tedious record (take your pick); I've already said enough on that. What's more interesting to me is the circuitous path Blur had taken to get to a point that anyone should care so much about their records. Originally aligned to the baggy/neo psychedelic movement of the early nineties, Blur re-invented themselves circa 1993 as arch social commentators of a very English cast in a series of releases that both presented and romantically nostalgiacised the low key culture of an idealised Albion.

To say that the images of steam trains and spitfires that fronted their record sleeves helped put the 'Brit' in Britpop is obvious and a little trite, yet it's no less accurate for it - Blur purposely set out to turn the attention of the record buying public back from whatever was coming from across the Atlantic (grunge, mainly). And as well as harking back to classic British pop, Liam Gallagher, Damon Albarn et al stamped their music as home-grown by unashamedly putting the regional accent back into music which, after a slew of dance mixes and grunge whinges, was as startlingly refreshing as the sixties Merseysound was amongst the various American imports that filled the domestic charts in the early sixties.

But for me I'm afraid, I had little time for either Blur or Oasis in 1995. I've already laid out my beefs with the latter, but Blur and their Small Faces/Kinks fixations and flirtations were in their own way no less recycling and repackaging music of the past to provide an alternative to the present. And although they may have inadvertently kick started the Brit pop movement, by the time of 'Country House', with a niche finally found, they had climbed into the driver’s seat, taken over the wheel and proceeded to drive it off the road; context may have invested the song with more stature than the band probably intended, but 'Country House' remains a very uneasy sounding single.

'Country House' has the immediate music hall roll of 'Parkilfe' for recent converts to latch on to, but a lyric of Balzac and Prozac paints it with a knowing Groucho club gloss that converts the tune into the key of irony, a suggestion that Blur were talking down rather than to. As a whole, it's a mix and match summation of everything they were 'about' from the knockabout to the arty but flat falling "Blow, blow me out I am so sad, I don't know why" middle eight. Albarn turns the dial on his 'mockney' accent up to 'exaggerated' until Dick Van Dyke's 'Bert' the chimney sweep and Jack Wild's 'Artful Dodger' battle it out for dominance in a mouth that reads the lyric with the smug charm of a bad character actor.

Albarn cast himself centre stage as ringmaster presiding over the anarchic tomfoolery unfolding before him, with his 'Ohhhhhhhh's a laughter track exclamation of constant surprise that he can't believe the mischief they're all getting up to (which presumably also includes the ironic use of the soft porn stars who ironically strip off in the ironic video). But that's it's main problem - no matter how hard it flatters to deceive, 'Country House' is a charmless affair with little warmth or humour; it's all been beaten out by the sheer forced effort of a band attempting to cover all bases as Britpop's jesters and philosophisers, and then ground out by the sheer repetition of the custard pie that the knees up chorus stuffs in your face every time it comes round.

Blur were riding a wave at that point and 'Country House' is probably the single they had to release to keep riding it, but hindsight has shown it to be the short term fix of giving a dog as a Christmas present; smiles at the time, but all that’s left by New Year's is a tune you can whistle (or a dog you can no longer be bothered to walk). All of which went to show that the space between Blue and Oasis wasn't as great as everybody thought. Not yet anyway.

1995 Take That: Never Forget

"With danger on my mind I would stay on the line of hope, I knew I could make it. Once I knew the boundaries I looked into the clouds and saw my face in the moonlight" - well you know the score by now; Gary Barlow writes some hobnailed lyrics, I make some tart comments and we all move on to the next song. Job done. This time though I'm going to cut him some slack. Yes those lines (and others therein - "We've come so far and we've reached so high, and we've looked each day and night in the eye") are rotten fruit plucked from the ugly tree, but at least this time they aren't trampling some poor girl in the dirt. Instead, 'Never Forget' carries a 'live for the moment because we'll all be dead one day' message ("We're not invincible, we're not invincible. No we're only people, we're only people. Hey we're not invincible, we're not invincible") that celebrates life and all who live it.

There's no harm at all in a bit of positivism regardless of the source, but 'Never Forget' falls flat in comparison with the previous Take That singles we've met which at least had a bit of oomph that masked the thoughtlessness within. 'Never Forget's choirboy opening promises an anthem but instead falls into a rut of a mid pace, minor key dance groove where it stays for its entire six minute running time without once conjuring up the elegiac mood it aims for. Which means 'Never Forget' gets rather boring before it gets to its end and - ironically - it makes it probably the least memorable of all their hits. But as I need a tart comment to end on, I would say that. Wouldn't I?

1995 The Outhere Brothers: Boom Boom Boom

For a few months now I've been planning on prefacing one of these entries with the general question "Are the music charts getting worse?" and then following it with my ten cents. worth But I haven't. And I haven't because, no matter how I try to arrange the words and sentences in my head, I can't do it in a way that doesn't make me sound like some stereotypical old git bemoaning that it used to be all green fields round here. Or to put it another way, without sounding like my father used to when I brought home the latest album from The Clash. But now faced with this second Outhere Brothers song in quick succession, I'm thinking now that, rather than deny that I've turned into him (something I used to fear worse than death), I should embrace it with open arms.

Because the simple fact is I do not like 'Boom Boom Boom' and my main reason seems to be simply that it pales in comparison with most of the other hundreds of entries that have taken up my time over the past three years or so. There, I've said it - things aren't as good as they used to be. There's another reason I don't like 'Boom Boom Boom' too - I don't understand it. Though maybe I should qualify that by saying I don't understand why everybody else liked it enough to make it the best selling single in the UK that week. What I especially don't understand is how such a prime example of American jock, six pack humour should be number one over here when the Brothers never managed the same level of success in their own US.

'Boom Boom Boom' has the same jokey, dancey, hip hop vibe of 'Don't Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)' - just as relentless, though slightly less cretinous, it's a single designed to establish or play off a party mood like a 'Hi Ho Silver Lining' for a new generation. "Boom boom boom now let me hear you say wayoh. I say boom boom boom now everybody say wayoh" - you get the picture. Or maybe like me, you don't. In line with 'Don't Stop', there's an explicit version of 'Boom Boom Boom' just for some adult giggles and shits, but for my money either version is a three and a half minute summation as to why hip hop gets such a bad press. But then again, maybe I am just getting old.

1995 Robson Green & Jerome Flynn: Unchained Melody

Third outing at the top for this song (itself a record), and if proof were needed that it's something anyone could have a hit with, this version comes courtesy of two TV actors who originally sang it in character in their 'Soldier Soldier' series. Yet with the vintage Righteous Brothers version a recent number one too, the question is begged as to what the pair bring to the table that's different. And other than the residual sentimental bleed over from the TV, the answer is a resounding 'nothing'. I'm not suggesting that anybody was expecting a rap makeover, but this present take puts me in mind of an image of the Righteous Brothers put through the cartoon-ification function of a computer photo suite. Bobby Hadfield's sedate delivery is followed and mimicked by a Jerry Lewis squeak that robs it of any grace and ceremony, aided and abetted by a Stock and Aitken production that takes it as close to cheesy pop as it dares. It's competent karaoke and on that score would no doubt be worthy of a round of applause and a drink behind the bar on a weekend, but it's a lame number one that sells itself on its own patriotic worthiness and a vague 'golden oldie' nostalgia and it only serves to waste my time.

1995 Livin' Joy: Dreamer

The first time 'Dreamer' crossed my path I heard it as an elaborate remix of A Guy Called Gerald's acid house classic 'Voodoo Ray', but I was being lazy. Yes there's a surface similarity in the bone on bone sparseness of their percussive beats, but 'Ray's chilled paranoia from the fridge is a world away from the red blood euphoria of 'Dreamer'. True, most of that euphoria comes from a barnstormer of a lead vocal from New Yorker Janice Robinson that 'Dreamer's house groove is content to play second fiddle to, but in truth it didn't have a lot of choice; her so goddamn happy blast would have drowned out the industrial clang of Nine Inch Nails. Italian House is not my most favoured of genres, but 'Dreamer' appeals via its 'stand alone' quality, a shot of aural Prozac that's guaranteed to gee up my mood. Which is good enough reason for me to give anything the thumbs up.

1995 Oasis: Some Might Say

By this time in 1995 I'd long since lost all personal interest in what was sitting at number one. The weekly Sunday night chart run down and then Top Of The Pops on a Thursday were no longer rituals they once were. It no longer mattered to me and hadn’t since about 1983. That's not to say that my obsession with music was any less, because it wasn't. It had just shifted elsewhere. Yet as an avid reader of the NME each week, I was always aware of the rise and fall of any number of flavours of the month over the years in the world of both the critical and the commercial. They came and went much like the seasons and my interest was generally only piqued when their sun shone too brightly to be ignored.

It was by this process of osmosis I became aware of a certain amount of hype that was generating around a band from Manchester called Oasis before they'd even released a note. Live reviews in the weeklies and monthlies were ecstatic and wont to adopt a reverent tone that suggested the saviours of the music industry were on their way. This kind of talk I find irresistible and so with expectation built roof top high, the sense of crushing disappointment when I finally got to hear their debut 'Supersonic' was palpable; Status Quo droning away on a cassette tape left out in the sun? This wasn’t my idea of how a saviour should sound. Not even close. And so after sniffing loudly, I went back to my Bang Bang Machine singles, convinced that the papers were selling me a pup and that the rest of the populace would agree with the same dismissive ‘tch’.

But they didn't. The records sold and the hype grew with every release until suddenly the band was unavoidable. Oasis this, Oasis that, the fights, the girlfriends, the violence and (sometimes) the music - like an episode of The Monkees scripted by Irvine Welsh, their car crash, soap opera existence played out all across the media in headlines and column inches normally reserved for political scandals involving bribery and rent boys. And I couldn't understand why. They even managed to sever my marriage with the NME after one of their hacks marvelled that Oasis had managed to progress from 'Supersonic' to the string laden 'Whatever' in six months when it had taken The Beatles four years to go from 'Love Me Do' to 'Eleanor Rigby'. Last copy of the NME I ever bought that was - and why was anyone comparing this stuff with The Beatles in the first place? I simply did not know.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing though isn't it? Because if the 1995 edition me was ignorant of the (then) recent trail of number one singles, writing these entries has made the modern version painfully aware of exactly what the public were buying. And my current lack of enthusiasm at the taste they were showing is such that what once I was dismissing as seventies throwbacks now feels as refreshing as a hard sharp blast of clear cold air.‘Some Might Say' has a guts and swagger that's not been heard in a good long while; in short, it sounds like a proper song, and a song that was needed.

Why needed? Well, I can vouch for a definite disturbance in the force as the mid nineties came round, a shrugging off of the suffocating political correctness of the eighties and the arrival of the Ben Sherman clad, lager lager lager lager of the new lads who needed a soundtrack to be all laddish to. And Oasis provided it. The last guitar led entry to date was the poor man's grunge of 'Inside', a song that was never going to be the sound of hedonism and the hitherto inexplicable rise of Oasis was (I now believe) rooted in the serendipity of being the right band in the right place at the right time.

Had they appeared a few years earlier or a few years later then it wouldn't have worked. The zeitgeist would not have been so welcoming and their impact lessened. Birmingham's Birdland tried to whip up a strikingly similar electric storm of sound with a classic rock attitude in 1989 but met with crushing indifference and apathy (apart from me, I loved them). And, jumping ahead, for all their latter day critical ‘decline’, I can hear precious little difference between Oasis' 'Definitely Maybe' debut album and their 2008 finale 'Dig Out Your Soul; it's not so much the band had changed as the times had changed around them.*

For the song at hand, first impressions still hold good; there's nothing particularly different about 'Some Might Say' - a glam rock thrash that takes a bit of 'Rocking All Over The World', a bit of 'Nutbush City Limits' and brings them together in a sparkly metal hybrid Marc/Mick riff over a brash Holder/Glitter chorus with a subject vague enough to mean whatever you wanted it to mean. 'Some Might Say' embraces the primitive qualities of original rock and roll with both arms in a bear hug with the associated hint of danger that did for the nineties what punk did to the seventies, albeit with a darn sight less imagination and with none of the political smarts. But that’s not what their audience wanted anyway. For someone (like me) reared on Slade and Bowie, it all sounded rather ho hum, yet for all its old and borrowed (nothing new or blue here), it sounds like a jump start to the heart in the context of the Wets and the Whigfield’s, a pair of sharp elbows taking out the trash with the minimum of fuss but with a Tom Sawyer arrogance and attitude that made the most simple of tasks seem like the coolest thing in the world until everyone wanted a go.


* And sometimes even because of them; this writer can remember the almost unanimously mediocre reviews parent album ‘(What’s The Story) Morning Glory’ received on release, subsequently amended when the population took it to their hearts and to then see the exact opposite occur with their next album. Quite remarkable.

1995 Take That: Back For Good

Sixth number one from Take That and one that's come to be regarded as their 'Stairway To Heaven', their 'Smoke On The Water', their 'Dark Side Of The Moon', 'Citizen Kane', ‘Gettysburg Address’ and 'À la recherche du temps perdu' all rolled into one. It's the one song that will be writ large in Gary Barlow's obituary and 'GARY BARLOW – NOT GONE FOR GOOD, JUST SLEEPING' will no doubt be chiselled onto his gravestone.

And is it all that? Well there's no doubt that 'Back For Good' has a nagging chorus of soulful endearment with an immediate appeal that’s hard to ignore. At first anyway. But its welcome turns into an annoying persistence that gets flogged hard and long until it becomes its be all and end all and the message becomes meaningless in much the same way as, for example The Osmonds' 'Love Me For A Reason' becomes a pile driving slogan of repetition rather than a fully formed song (come on - do you know how any of the verses go?)

And regarding the song beneath, 'Back For Good' has a smooth yet sterile soul swing that approximates an idealised take on late night Motown but a take that’s one step removed from the source; it’s indicative of Barlow having read about acts like The Temptations and then trying to recreate it without ever actually going to the trouble of listening to the records. I don’t mean that as a particularly harsh criticism – after all, it's the nature of the beast and I’ve overlooked (and enjoyed) worse examples of filtered style than this. But to my mind that’s not where the problems end and 'Back For Good's shiny wrapper only serves as dressing to distract attention from the rotten egg beneath.

I wrote previously how 'Back For Good' slots in nicely to close the trilogy started by 'Everything Changes' and 'Babe' (which they inconveniently released out of sequence) with the narrator, now face to face with his stray babe on her doorstep, makes a last ditch pitch to patch things up. "Whatever I said, whatever I did I didn't mean it. I just want you back for good". Excuse me? You have no idea what caused the upset but it doesn't matter because you didn't mean it? That's hardly a deal clincher of an understanding apology is it? And if you're in that much ignorance over what caused the rift, then how do you know it won't happen again eh?

Not that Barlow cares; “Whenever I'm wrong just tell me the song and I'll sing it, you'll be right and understood” - again, it’s the hammering of the "I want'" male angle with no recognition of the two way process a relationship entails that irritates in its blissful oblivion to any suggestion that the 'problem' here might just be that she's sick of the sight of his face and his domineering chauvinism. As egotistic as you like, the decision to rekindle this old flame is unilateral ("I guess now it's time for me to give up. I feel it's time") and it ends with a demand to satisfy a personal need that carries with it a faint hint of menace: "I think it's time you came back for good" - or what Gary? Are you going to give her a pot in the gob? That would explain the "fist of pure emotion" he's got anyway.

I daresay neither Gary Barlow nor the band consciously mean harm by any of this and that my constant witch hunts are a cheap form of bloodsport to stoke the fires of my own feelings of superiority over the folks who enjoy music of this nature. But then it's precisely because of the hamfistedness of his lyrics, their inherent gobbledegook whenever their not delivering a generic moon in June chorus ("Unaware but underlined I figured out the story. It wasn't good. But in the corner of my mind I celebrated glory. But that was not to be") and the general derivativeness of any of the music they get hitched to that I can't take 'Back For Good' (or Gary Barlow as a songwriter per se) seriously.

Not as seriously as others seem to do anyway. As far as teen/pop idol/heartthrobs etc go, Take That seemed to exist solely to churn out a steady diet of songs for female doormats happy to be seduced into acquiescence by a cheeky smile of manipulation, a promise of forever that will doubtless be broken and a self centred alpha male attitude that reduces them to chattels who should fall in line with whatever the boys want. You never got that from The Osmonds did you eh?

1995 The Outhere Brothers: Don't Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)

A Chicago born, dance cum hip hop duo, the very name 'Outhere Brothers' raises the hackles with its self promoting suggestion of the off the wall wackiness to come. And on that score at least 'Don't Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)' takes those initial fears and cubes them; basically a four minute frat boy keg party on a disc, 'Don't Stop' is banality writ large, a repeating "Don't stop movin' baby ooh that booty drive me crazy, Wiggle wiggle, wiggle wiggle" chorus that unsubtly chug-a-lugs its one 'joke' down the throat via a funnel and hose until it vomits its own tedium back over itself with a 'Yo Dude' thumbs up. Neither dance nor hip hop, 'Don't Stop' is a junior school playground chant for pre-pubescent boys just starting to notice girls but with no clue what to do about it (there's an X rated version that's all "pussy", "ass" and "dick" that is, if anything, even more clueless). Who was buying it? Gawd knows. Maybe it fed into the emerging, Loaded fired 'new lad' culture of the mid nineties - the accompanying video of the brothers mud wrestling with a bevy of blonde, busty, bikini babes suggests as much anyway. To modern ears though it's as embarrassing as your mother recounting to your new girlfriend how you still regularly wet the bed at age twelve - that is, something best forgotten.

1995 Cher, Chrissie Hynde & Neneh Cherry With Eric Clapton: Love Can Build A Bridge

The 1995 Comic Relief single; on one hand the biggest relief comes from it being played straight for a change with no horrorshow misguided attempts at being funny.* But on the other, by not at least trying and instead offering up a soft rock take on a country song originally by The Judds by three disparate vocalists that nobody was dying to see gathered in the same room has a lazy, 'can't be arsed'-ness about it. Of course, the message is everything and the 'love conquers all' and grandstanding heroics of "I'd gladly walk across the desert with no shoes upon my feet, to share with you the last bite of bread I had to eat" remain and do their job, but with none of the singers trying to hog the limelight by playing to their strengths, the end result is wodge of bland sentimentality that tries to mug your wallet by bulldozing its way to your heart with a mallet and cold chisel. If it worked then fine, and good luck to all involved, but the only 'plus' I can derive from this nuclear sugar bomb is finally seeing Clapton's name attached to a number one song.

* And as the 'bonus track' had Tom Jones and Lenny Henry going at Bad Company's 'Can't Get Enough Of Your Love' in comedy style, that relief is massive.

1995 Celine Dion: Think Twice

Though she can be said to be the hitherto missing piece in a tri-partite of nineties pop divas, Celine Dion always stood slightly apart, slightly aloof from contemporaries Maria and Whitney. Whereas the latter pair were happy to flaunt their pop wares in all things cropped or low cut, Celine tended to drape whatever she did in Chanel and floor length Dior to appeal to the more sophisticated end of the market. All bluff of course - there's nothing in the soft rock of 'Think Twice' that Maria couldn't have made hay with, but its appeal stems Dion knowing when to let the land lie fallow and when to ramp up the drama, like on the "This is getting serious" line where she snaps you to attention as surely as if she were addressing the listener directly. Yes it all goes a bit Heart or Pat Benatar by the time Aldo Nova wades in with a noodly guitar solo, but it all adds to the definite 1970's glow that 'Think Twice' gives off, making it almost a refugee from that decade that managed to escape the clutches of Kiki Dee or Barbara Dickson. And this in turn helps make it stand out as an artefact of quality amongst the slick dance mixes it rubs shoulders with. It's not, particularly (quality, that is), but in providing an exception it's a timely lesson in how music used to sound by default.

1995 Rednex: Cotton Eye Joe

"There's no great art to layering a 4/4 dance beat over an existing piece of music to 'dance it up'; after all, anyone can do it" - there's no great honour in quoting yourself to back up your own arguments either, but sometimes the turn of events can paint you into a corner where options are limited; if 'Cotton Eye Joe' isn't an example of slapping a dance beat over an unlikely source to give it a nineties sheen then I'm a Dutchman. But then again, as it has an American bluegrass folk song as its source that in turn inspired many a partner and line dance then I suppose it's not that unlikely and didn't need too much of a Eurodance boot from these Swedes to get it going in this modern setting. Unfortunately, its line dance ancestry boots it down a highway to hell where the devil, wearing chaps and a ten gallon hat, sings 'Achy Breaky Heart' at every crossroads.

Do I like it? No I don't - there's something very dad's and grandma's about 'Cotton Eye Joe' and the trans-Atlantic Wurzels, hillbilly image of the band, something very wedding reception or office party that's all forced jollity and fake humour to let the old and the game hit the floor to show they've still "got it". If that sounds mean spirited, it's because it's meant to; 'Cotton Eye Joe' puts me in that mood. Because while I've also said "I'm always partial to a bit of quirk in anything, and there should always be room in the charts for something that almost defies categorisation", 'Cotton Eye Joe' is by no means either an update/re-interpretation of Americana or a radical development in the dance genre - what it is, is a novelty collision of two distinct worlds and ages that's a logical extension of the work 'Jive Bunny' started. And far from being 'quirky', it's indicative of a wider, lazy malaise that saw novelty fast becoming the norm - following a year that already gave us 'Baby Come Back', 'Saturday Night', 'Doop' and 'Twist And Shout' it's a makeover too many, and it's also neatly illustrative of both just how easy it was getting to 'create' a number one record and how easily pleased the record buying public were growing to be.